There's no analogy.There is no civil rights issue.America practised slavery. Then it abolished slavery. Then there was segregation and discrimination. It didn't free "Africans" it freed people whose ancestry was African who were to become "African-Americans." When the Civil Rights Act was passed, it didn't give those people " sovereignty" it gave them"civil rights". In America.It had nothing to do with any kind of right - or compensation - anywhere else. On no other land.Jews were not slaves.Jews were treated as badly - worse - in western Christian countries. Emancipation in Europe is more analogous for Jews. Voting rights, and the ability to enter society as equal under the law.There is no civil rights issue.

Nonsense. The analogy is hardly perfect, but it is obviously not non-existent.

Just as for centuries Africans in the Americas were slaves, so for thirteen centuries Christians and Jews were a much persecuted minority under Arab-Muslim imperial rule as dhimmis.

That's the point.

"There is no civil rights issue."

I see.

You do not believe that Jewish rights to property in Judea represents a civil rights issue. I suspect that Caroline Glick would disagree with you.

"America practised slavery. Then it abolished slavery. Then there was segregation and discrimination."

Really.

So, let me get this straight. First America practised slavery and then it abolished slavery. Huh. And you are suggesting that afterward there was segregation and discrimination. Gee, I had no idea.

What happened then?

"It didn't free "Africans" it freed people whose ancestry was African who were to become "African-Americans."

Oh, OK, you're right. The US freed Americans of African descent... except for the ones born in Africa.

What is the point of this hairsplitting?

"When the Civil Rights Act was passed, it didn't give those people " sovereignty" it gave them civil rights".

Again, Jewish rights to property in Judea and Samaria represent issues of the civil liberties of the Jewish people on our ancestral homeland.

And, yes, I have gleaned that African-Americans did not gain sovereignty in the United States after LBJ's passage of the Civil Rights Act.

What kind of fucking idiot to you think that you are talking to?

"Jews were not slaves."

Ya don't say?

No, we were merely servants and a persecuted minority whose numbers were kept at an absolute minimum by a much larger hostile power over the course of thirteen long centuries who gave us no rights to the courts, who made us ride donkeys rather than horses, who refused to allow us to rebuild synagoues, and who could kill us free-of-charge strictly for the hell of it.

But enough of this mierda.

I do not mind disagreements, but I would much prefer them to be around central arguments... not the random picking at nits of off-the-cuff comments.

Mike,I'm sorry that what I wrote has caused such antagonism. Perhaps I expressed myself badly.I was responding to the idea that there is an analogy between America's history of slavery and the Arab/Muslim countries history of their treatment of Jews and the notion of moral obligation arising from that.That is the analogy you suggested.The reason I don't think the analogy stands up is this:America came to the understanding, culturally, socially, and politically, that part of its history was egregious. That its treatment of people who had been brought over as part of the slave trade, and their descendants was morally unacceptable. America came to that conclusion and felt it had a moral obligation to change. And to, eventually, offer full civil rights to those people. You used the word "price" to describe that.The Arab/Muslim countries had no such realization about their treatment of Jews. There was no belief that they had acted egregiously, or that they had to change. They did not offer full civil rights to their Jewish minorities. Most importantly, they did not reach any conclusion that they had a moral obligation to Jews, in any way. Let alone that Jews should be given the right to self-determination. America wished to give civil rights to people it had treated with discrimination.Arab/Muslim countries did not.

I don't think this is "nitpicking" as it was a response to a particular thought about a particular analogy.We were not discussing central arguments, it was a very specific point.Israel doesn't exist because of how Arab/Muslim countries perceived their own history.They have always opposed its existence.America came to its own changed understanding of itself and acted through legislation accordingly.

One can say that wherever people are persecuted, that there should be some sort of moral obligation to make things right.Jews were certainly persecuted and discriminated against in the Arab/Muslim world. Of course. But where I do not see the analogy is that the Arab/Muslim world, unlike America, never felt any responsibility for that.

That was the point I was trying to make.

I am not sure whether one part of your comment refers to the case for Israel's existence, or the case for Jews living in property in a particular part of the country. That is the part where you mentioned Caroline Glick. When I said it was not a civil rights issue, I meant that civil rights are granted to people living within a particular state or polity. Of course Jews in Israel should have civil rights, but those rights can only be granted them by the state they live under. I was addressing a very particular point that you made in drawing an analogy. I did not feel the analogy was useful. I'm sorry if it has caused any confusion.

I apologize for getting sarcastic with you. That was inapropriate, especially toward one of the best friends that this blog has ever had.

In any case, although we agree that the analogy is far from perfect, my argument is very simple.

Just as African-Americans lived under circumstances of oppression and, thus, required their freedom, so the Jews lived under circumstances of oppression under Muslim rule and, therefore, likewise required their freedom.

Of course, African-Americans were never going to receive sovereignty within the United States, but they did not need sovereignty to attain their freedom. What they needed was their civil rights.

The Jews were never going to gain civil rights under Arab rule and therefore sovereignty was, and is, the only option toward Jewish freedom in the Middle East.

In any case, sorry for getting pissy. It was absolutely not your fault.

Barack Obama on the so-called "Arab Spring" (May 19, 2011):

"There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat."

The "Arab Spring" was the brutal rise of political Islam in the Middle East and this is what Obama compares the Civil Rights Movement to?

The Fundamental Argument:

The progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, creates and supports venues that demonize and defame the Jewish state, thereby also creating hatred toward the Jewish people.

Such venues include political journals, such as, but not limited to, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian, numerous universities throughout the United States and Europe, various NGOs with an anti-Israel agenda, and the entire progressive-left movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the Jewish people of the state of Israel.

These venues and organizations do not generally criticize Israel, but dehumanize that country.

For this reason, among others, the progressive movement, and the activist base of the Democratic Party, undermines the well-being and safety of Jews around the world, sometimes resulting in violence toward us.

Therefore, as a matter of common sense and basic human decency, Jews should leave the progressive movement and the Democratic Party as we seek to build alternative political structures that are not home to toxic anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who would see us robbed of self-determination and self-defense.

What You Can't Discuss:

This is a partial list of taboo topics within progressive-left venues around the Arab-Israel conflict. You cannot discuss this material because it undermines the "Palestinian narrative" of perpetual victimhood. This narrative is a club used by the Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel, along with their western progressive allies, to delegitimize that country in preparation for its eventual dissolution.

1) The centuries of Jewish dhimmitude under the boot of Islamic imperialism.

2) The recent construction of Palestinian identity, its connection to Soviet Cold War politics, and how this is an Arab people with a Roman name that refers to Greeks.

3) Arab and Palestinian Koranically-based racism as the fundamental source of the conflict.

4) The ways in which contemporary progressive anti-Zionism serves as a cloak for gross anti-Semitism.

5) The Palestinian theft and appropriation of Jewish history.

6) "Pallywood."

7) The historical connections between the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinian national movement.

8) The perpetual refusal of the Palestinian-Arabs to accept a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

9) The progressive portrayal of terrorists as those fighting a righteous war of "resistance."

10) The Arab-Palestinian indoctrination of children with Jew hatred.

11) Human rights violations against women, children, and Gay people in the Muslim Middle East.

12) The fact that violent Jihadis call themselves "Jihadis" and claim to love death above life.

This is only a partial list, so please let us know the many more that we are missing.

Quote of the Whenever:

It is not that most progressives are anti-Semitic. They aren't. It's that they don't get it, they don't care, and they very much want you to shut the fuck up. - Michael Lumish